Day 2:
Did I mention how tough the time change is to Europe? Well…more on that later. For now, I will say that we watched a movie that 2nd night – Armageddon, but I had trouble staying awake and then Joe had trouble staying awake. I got the gist of it and I think Joe decided that he liked it much better 15 years ago, but we managed to mostly stay awake until 8:00 or 8:30. Then we went to sleep and although we both woke up a few times, it was only for a few moments at a time and we slept all the way until 8:45 the next morning!!! This victory, however, would be short-lived.
The sun does shine sometimes in Dublin and it was shining today. So we decided to take advantage and go to the Guinness Storehouse because we knew they had an incredible bar at the top that overlooked the city. We bought a Dublin Pass when we arrived at the airport. The Dublin Pass gets you into lots of attractions for the one price you pay. The bad thing about it is that you have to use it on consecutive days, which would end up kind of biting us later.
The Guinness Storehouse was our 4th brewery in the beers of the world tour. It was preceded by Heineken, Miller, and Coors. I actually thought it was quite well done – especially the actual brewing part. This one was a self-guided tour. They had a big “bin” of barley so you could see what it looked like and a cool display of hops and then a huge very cool waterfall because, yes, there is water in beer. There was lots of good information about the history of the brewery, too. The highlight of this brewery tour, though, is the Skybar. Up on the 7th floor, you get a 360 degree view of Dublin. We could see all the way to the ocean. We got our free beers and Joe drank his and I drank about 1/3 of mine, because let’s be honest – I don’t care for Guinness. Great story and all, but dark beer is bitter and just not good to me.
Guess which beer is Joe's and which beer is mine: 
From the Guinness Storehouse, we headed to Kilmainham Gaol. Gaol is the Gaelic word for jail, and this is an old jail that is no longer in use. This was actually one of our favorite stops of our visit. We got a look at prison conditions before prison reform came around and it was pretty gruesome. We learned more about the potato famine as well. In fact, we learned that the prison population exploded from 700-900 to over 9,000 in 1850. This was due to 2 things – 1) a vagrancy act was passed by Britain that called for the arrest of any person found begging in the streets; but 2) (and more fascinating) people were so hungry during the potato famine that they would commit a crime just to be thrown in jail. Because no matter how bad jail was, at least you were guaranteed 2 meals a day – 2 more than you were getting at home and / or on the streets. The prison housed many political prisoners before it was shut down. Before Ireland gained its freedom from Britain, anyone who protested against Britain was thrown in jail. We actually saw the jail cell of a man who helped lead the revolution – a man that would later become the President and would lead the country for many years, Eamon de Valera. The jail has been used in 3 movies that we plan to add to our Netflix list – Michael Collins, The Italian Job (the original one), and In the Name of the Father.
And now to the sad, sad story of adjusting to the time change. After our day out and about we returned back to our hotel and spent a couple of hours planning our next day and looking a few things up on the free internet. A little before 10:00PM, we turned in. We both fell sound asleep immediately. Only to wake up at midnight. Wide awake – both of us. We talked and commiserated about being awake for 2 hours until Joe fell back asleep. I, however, was not so lucky. I laid there praying for sleep for another 2 hours. At 4:00AM, I turned on the light to read because I thought I might lose my mind just laying there. I thought Joe was asleep enough it wouldn’t bother him – and it didn’t for about 15 seconds. But then he jumped up, squinting at the light. So, I turned the light back off. At 4:15, I took my duvet and pillow into the bathroom and made a pallet on the floor. From there, I read my book for 45 minutes, but the floor was too hard and too cold, so I gave up and went back to bed at 5:00. And then I finally fell asleep. Sigh.
Day 3:
This is kind of where the Dublin Pass burned us. Another sunny day in Dublin and we might have enjoyed a stroll through St. Stephens Green and Merrion Square, but we couldn’t pass up seeing the rest of the places covered by our pass. The parks are free, so today we concentrated on the sights with admission costs, covered by our pass.
Our first stop for the day was Dublin Castle. Dublin Castle was built on the spot of the first Viking fortress. For 700 years the castle was occupied by the British viceroy – who implemented the will of the British royalty in Ireland when Ireland was still part of Great Britain. Today it is used for state functions, including the inauguration of the Irish president every 7 years. This is the room where the ceremony is held:
Our second stop was Christ Church Cathedral. Neither this, nor St. Patrick’s Cathedral was actually recommended by our official "tour guide," Rick Steves. They are both Church of Ireland and he felt that in “Catholic Ireland” the sights felt hollow. However, as they were covered by the Dublin Pass, we checked them out anyway. The Christ Church was particularly interesting because of its underground crypt. It is very extensive and kind of spooky. Christ Church Cathedral is the oldest structure still standing in Dublin.
Not far from Christ Church was St. Patrick’s Cathedral. St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland and he is celebrated around the world every year on March 17th – St. Patrick’s Day. St. Patrick’s is the national cathedral of Ireland. It was built in 1192, but the site has always been religious. On his journey through Ireland, St. Patrick is said to have passed through Dublin and baptized converts to Christianity at a holy well on the cathedral grounds. St. Patrick’s was home to one of Dublin’s most famous authors – Jonathan Swift – and he is, in fact buried here.
We decided to make the most of our Dublin Pass by sprinting over to the Dublin Writer’s Museum. This was really just an effort to maximize the Dublin Pass by going to a museum that charged admission. I’m going to have to quote Rick Steves on this one because he had it right on: “No other country so small has produced such a wealth of literature. As interesting to fans of Irish literature as it is boring to those who aren’t, this three-room museum features the lives and works of Dublin’s great writers.” Well…I didn’t know most of them, so I guess boring would be an adequate description.
After all that, we lost 0.55 Euro on the Dublin Pass – I really should have done better research on that one!!!
We walked back down O’Connell Street to the bus stop. O’Connell Street is the main street through the city centre. They had a pretty cool Christmas tree in the middle, which I wanted to photograph. We also checked out the General Post Office building. This one is not just any post office – it was from here that the Proclamation of Irish Independence was read in 1916 and kicked off the Easter Rising. The G.P.O. building itself – kind of an Irish Alamo – was the rebel headquarters and scene of a five-day bloody siege that followed the proclamation. Its pillars remain pockmarked with bullet holes.
With the help of Tylenol PM, I managed to get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow would be our last day in the city.
Day 4:
The clouds moved back in and we were greeted with a dreary, misty day. Should I reiterate that buying the Dublin Pass, though great in theory, was probably not our best decision?
We spent today checking out the free museums that the Dublin Pass claimed to cover (I guess it covers special exhibits that cost extra). First, I wanted to head back to the end of O’Connell Street to get some pictures that I missed yesterday. The days are short here – the sun doesn’t rise until almost 9:00AM and sets about 4:30PM. Therefore, I didn’t get a picture of the Dublin Writer’s Museum. But, more than that, I wanted to visit the Garden of Remembrance, which is right across the street, and they were closing it as we arrived yesterday (the parks – including St. Stephen Green – all close at dusk). The Garden of Remembrance honors the victims of the 1916 Rising. It was dedicated in 1966, the 50 year anniversary of the revolt that ultimately led to Irish independence. The Irish flag flies above the park: green for Catholics, orange for Protestants, and white for the hope that they can live together in peace.
We passed through St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral on the way to our next museum. Mass was just getting over as we arrived. This is Dublin’s leading Catholic Church, although it is not a Cathedral like Christ Church and St. Patrick’s are. It was very pretty and very busy and the good Catholic in Joe forbade me from taking photographs or even walking around much because we weren’t appropriately dressed for church in Ireland. So I guess I’ll just note that we were there.
Our next stop was the Chester Beatty Library. Chester Beatty was a rich American mining engineer who retired to Ireland in 1950 and later became Ireland’s first honorary citizen. It’s a small collection with one floor dedicated to the world’s great religions. The other floor is all about the written word, with topics including etching, medieval book binding, and fine old manuscripts. The oldest surviving copy of St. Paul’s letter to the Romans is part of the collection. I was skeptical of this museum, but it was highly recommended and we both enjoyed it immensely.
Our final stop was the National Museum: Archaeology and History. I learned here that I’m not that interested in archaeology. I’m interested in what we LEARN from archaeology, but not the artifacts so much themselves. There was a wing dedicated to Viking Dublin, which was the most interesting.
As I walked around Dublin for the last 4 days I thought to myself, Paris has the Mona Lisa; Rome has the Sistine Chapel. Dublin isn’t a city as rich in art or history as a lot of other European cities, but it has a great character. And the people are so fantastically friendly. It made the visit such a great pleasure.
We had another unfortunate sleep night on this last night before our journey was concluded. I did not take Tylenol PM because I was afraid that I wouldn’t make the 6:00AM alarm for our trip to the airport. So, instead, I lay awake for hours. I tried to read, but I woke up Joe again and this time he had trouble going back to sleep. I believe that I finally managed to go to sleep about 3:00AM. At 3:39AM, the fire alarm in our room went off. OMG!!! My heart was POUNDING!!! It only sounded for a few seconds, so I figured it was probably a false alarm, but to be sure I called the front desk. They did confirm that, so we managed to get back to sleep for the couple of hours we had before it was time to get ready for our journey home.
Our flight home was fairly uneventful. We did, fortunately, get business class again on the way home, but we didn’t get to sit together. By the time we reached our house at 9:00PM, we were pretty exhausted, but it was worth it. Another fabulous trip in the books.
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